218 results for author: Joanna Campe

Study Captures Data to Turn Midwestern Farms into Carbon Sinks

(Left to right) Prof. Daniel Maxbauer, Jaren Yambing, and Ella Milliken Carleton College geologists join a growing wave of research into the carbon-trapping power of pulverized rock in America's agricultural fields No one could have predicted the severe heatwave that would swelter Ella Milliken and Jaren Yambing's first week of baseline field testing in June 2021—except maybe climate scientists. It was the longest heatwave to occur so early in a Minnesotan summer.  Under a blazing June sun, the Carleton College research assistants walked among rows of knee-high corn saplings in 90-degree weather. Flagging the corners of 12 half-acre plots, they ...

RTE’s Early Publications Freely Available on Internet Archive – Explore the history of the movement!

In 1986, Joanna Campe began to publish a newsletter originally titled Soil Remineralization, A Network Newsletter. The publication reached a global community of soil remineralization advocates, united by a common mission to return the Earth to its Eden-like conditions. What began as a newsletter later evolved into a magazine – Remineralize the Earth – with 80 pages per issue and a readership of about 2,500. Today, 20 of RTE’s early publications, newsletters and magazines, are preserved as high-resolution scans freely accessible on the Internet Archive. Since the first newsletter in the 1980s, throughout the magazine’s circulation in the ...

REMINERA: How A Stonemeal Startup Arose During A Time Of Pandemic

It was the beginning of the pandemic. My colleague, Nayara Mesquita, and I had recently defended our geosciences masters theses at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), and I was still figuring out my ‘next steps’ in life. Always the multitasker, Nayara was already doing an MBA on leadership and sustainability, along with social entrepreneurship and environmental activism. She warmly invited me to join her and start studying stonemeal, food security and carbon sequestration. We had heard about stonemeal just once or twice at university, and so it was still a relatively new field for us. It did not take much to fall in love with the ...

Powering Food Sovereignty with Microbes: The Nature Farming Convergence

. Key takeaways from the 2021 International Nature Farming Convergence What does a jungle that produces vegetables with rock dust and a weed-laden garden have in common? They both host a vast world of microbes that can save humanity from itself. With the secret to food sovereignty lying right underneath our feet, agriculturalists need to get out of the clouds of technology and back into the dirt to unearth its potential. In the past 20 years, the agricultural industry has created a rich and costly market of garden tech meant to fix any problem encountered in the field. Too many aphids? Get a pesticide drone. Yield not high enough? Use genetic ...

Book Review: A World Without Soil

A review of: A World Without Soil: The past, present, and precarious future of the earth beneath our feet by Jo Handelsman, 2021, Yale University Press   This book is a good, clearly written, popular introduction to how quickly we are losing the topsoil that feeds us, and how politicians treat soil like dirt. The author, a plant pathologist, is Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at University of Wisconsin–Madison, and was Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to President Obama.  She focuses on contemporary soil issues, primarily reducing erosion and the need to increase ...

IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem: Highlights from the Presentations in Portuguese

(Clockwise from top right) Dr. Magda Bergmann, Prof. Suzi Huff Theodoro, and Dr. Antonio N. Zamunér Filho. “I was converted,” confessed agronomist Antônio Bizão. Listening to Bizão’s skepticism of stonemeal was the highlight of the IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem (which translates to “IV Brazilian Congress of Stonemeal”). Bizão talked of his intention, years ago, to denounce professionals who defended the use of silicate rocks for agriculture, before conducting experiments himself and obtaining replicable positive results. We were listening to a stonemeal Saul of Tarsus and the moment allowed me a glimpse of a community of farmers ...

IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem: Highlights from the Presentations in English

Since September 2009 Brazil has held a conference on rochagem (rock dust) every 3 years. The Brazilian Conference on Rochagem highlights Brazil’s role as a leader in scientific research and policy creation around the use of rock dust as a sustainable fertilizer. The Congress creates a forum for researchers, the general public and private interests to discuss the scientific advances, effective policies and future rock dust potential. Past conferences have steadily advanced the importance of rock dust as a fertilizer to enhance food security and promote environmental health in Brazil. Despite pandemic difficulties, the IV Congresso Brasileiro de ...

Tomatoes, Orchards, and Forests: Studying Reforestation and Remineralization in China

Carbon reduction in China For China, carbon-reduction efforts remain rooted in reforestation and afforestation efforts, as the country keeps planting trees through to 2025.[4] In addition to these efforts, researchers in the People’s Republic have turned their attention increasingly towards enhanced weathering and rock dust application, studying reforestation and remineralization. China has decades of experience with major tree planting projects, for example, in 1978 initiating the so-called “Great Green Wall” project (official name: the Three-North Shelter Forest Program), whose goal is to plant 2,800 miles of tree-based wind breaking forest ...

Make Climate Goals Attainable: Remineralize croplands

A truck spreading rock dust on a field. Photo by Ilsa Kantola, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Paris Climate Agreement metrics are just out of reach As of July 2021, the top 10 fossil carbon emitting nations are failing to meet their 2030 green-house gas (GHG) reduction goals, as pledged under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement defines a hard warming limit to 2°C, but current status quo climate initiatives – even if met – will lead to a global warming of 2.6 - 3.1°C. Heating of this magnitude could set forth a cascade of irreversible effects. The Earth, and the communities it supports, are in crisis.  To make climate goals ...

Murky Waters: How Sediments Impact Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheets

Image caption: The sediment-rich meltwater river originating from Leverett Glacier in southwest Greenland, pictured in June 2012. Photo credit: Jon Hawkings Few consequences of global climate change are as notorious as melting ice sheets. However, the process responsible for this phenomenon is not as straightforward, or as well-understood, as might be imagined.  Ice sheets are masses of glacial ice that form over land, covering a minimum of 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles) [1]. During Earth’s most recent ice ages, ice sheets stretching into the Arctic Ocean blanketed much of the northern regions of North America and Europe, while ...